* As was common in the pre-rock era, multiple versions of a single song from a Broadway show would become hits. All chart positions are from the U.S. Billboard pop charts.

Review:

Show Boat “is generally considered to be the first true American ‘musical play’.” WK It separated itself from the operettas, light musical comedies, and Follies-type musical revues of the 1890s and early 20th century by telling a dramatic plot-and-character driven story accompanied by music. WK

The musical, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, was based on Ednar Ferber’s 1926 novel of the same name. WK The show works in a few songs not by Kern and Hammerstein, including Bill, written by P.G. Wodehouse in 1918, but reworked by Hammerstein for Show Boat. Goodbye, My Lady Love by Joseph Howard and After the Ball by Charles K. Harris have become mainstays in the American stage productions of the show as well. WK

The show opened on Broadway on December 27, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, where it ran for a year and a half. The 1928 London cast album was released in England before the United States. Since the U.S. had not started making original cast albums of Broadway shows, there was no album made of the 1927 Broadway cast. WK However, for the 1932 revival of the musical, a cast album was made featuring Helen Morgan and Paul Robeson, who were both in the original American and London casts of Show Boat, E-C alongside “James Melton, Frank Munn, and Countess Olga Albani” WK and an orchestra conducted by Victor Young. WK The recordings of “Ol’ Man River and a Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man…are truly authoritative. The…sound is astonishingly good.” E-C

The show was revived again in 1946, 1983, and 1994. WK Similarly, cast album recordings have been made multiple times, including 1946, 1956, 1958, 1962, 1966, 1971, 1988, and 1994. It was also made into a movie in 1936 with members from the original Broadway and London productions. It was made into a movie again in 1951 although it “was prettied up considerably and reshaped almost beyond recognition. On the other hand, Howard Keel’s baritone is one of the most pleasing voices in movies of that era, and teamed with Kathryn Grayson’s fluttering alto, the results are beguiling on songs like Only Make Believe.” E-S It “wasn’t treated too seriously by most purists until the 1990s, when it emerged as a minor classic in its own right.” E-S

Saturday, December 17, 1977

Saturday Night Live made its name in the 1970s not just for its live sketch comedy, but for musical performances. For the December 17, 1977 broadcast, the Sex Pistols were scheduled to perform. Their criminal records complicated the process of getting them visas in time so Elvis Costello & the Attractions were invited instead. Ironically, one would have assumed no one was more likely to provide controversy than the Pistols, but Elvis proved them wrong.

Costello wanted to promote his upcoming new single “Radio Radio”. However, the powers-that-be wanted an already established song from his repetoire. Lorne Michaels, the show’s producer, also didn’t want them to perform the song because of its anti-media message ZM which criticized “the commercialization and payola of the airwaves.” RS Costello seemingly obliged, kicking into a performance of “Less Than Zero”. However, he’d barely started the song when he turned to his band yelling “Stop! Stop!” and then informing the audience, “I’m sorry ladies and gentleman, there’s no reason to do this song here.” He then launched into “Radio Radio” instead.

The move got Costello banned from the program for more than a decade. Michaels was not a fan of such spontaneous changes and was reportedly infuriated that it put the show off schedule. ZM Costello has said the move was inspired by a Jimi Hendrix performance on BBC television in which he was supposed to play “Hey Joe” but opted for a cover of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” instead. That broadcast was stopped when it ran “longer and louder than the show’s producers intended.” WK

Costello finally appeared as a musical guest again in 1989 and also in 1991. For SNL’s 25th anniversary in 1999, the Beastie Boys were beginning a performance of their song “Sabotage” when Costello interrupted them and they played “Radio Radio” together.

Friday, December 16, 1977

This 1977 drama told the story of Brooklynite Tony Manero, played by John Travolta. He lived with his unsupportive parents and worked a dead-end hardware store job. However, his weekends were devoted to dancing at the local discotheque.

British writer Nik Cohn provided the inspiration for the movie with his 1976 New York magazine article “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night”. Cohn was a newcomer to the United States and a stranger to the disco lifestyle. Unable to grasp the subculture which he was expected to write about, he fabricated the article based on a Mod acquaintance. WK

The movie has been largely credited with popularizing disco around the world. It made Travolta a household name and the soundtrack, which prominently featured the Bee Gees, was one of the best-selling albums of all time. In fact, the film was the first example of cross-media marketing with a single being used to promote the film before its release. WK

The film was considered by many critics to be one of the best movies of 1977. It was featured in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and in 2010 was selected to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. Travolta earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

“One album was all they made, and probably all anyone could stand.” TL “For better and worse, this thirty-nine-minute blast of loud and proud scruffiness has become punk’s ground zero” TM or “the Sermon on the Mount of English punk — and the echoes are everywhere.” RS “No other band managed such a colossal reputation on the basis of such a brief resume.” VH1

“That's not to say it’s the best punk record, or even necessarily the first. But it was the first one to tantalize, to terrorize, and eventually galvanize a large part of the rock-speaking world.” TM It was “a shot of strychnine for a tottering empire” VH1 and where “British rock rediscovered its energy.” TB

“At a time when lofty virtuosos like Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Pink Floyd were filling the airwaves with all sorts of well-crafted pretention, the Pistols came blasting out with poorly played (and even more poorly sung) three-chord guitar assaults” PK which had a “garage rehearsal atmosphere.” PR “Singer Johnny Rotten, guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bassist Sid Vicious made old-fashioned rock bad boys such as The Rolling Stones and The Who look like wimps in comparison.” RV

“While mostly accurate, dismissing Never Mind the Bollocks as merely a series of loud, ragged mid-tempo rockers with a harsh, grating vocalist and not much melody would be a terrible error.” AMG “Underneath the shock tactics and theatrical negativity were social critiques carefully designed for maximum impact. Never Mind the Bollocks perfectly articulated the frustration, rage, and dissatisfaction of the British working class with the establishment” AMG as it “picks the scabs from the seamier side of society.” PR The Pistols’ “loud, snotty and angry” approach created “an us-against-them ideology that disaffected kids everywhere understood immediately” TM and “a spirit quick to translate itself to strictly rock & roll terms.” AMG

“Recognizing that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, manager-Svengali Malcolm McLaren” AZ “seized upon the notoriety, using television appearances and outrageous altercations with media to fan the flames” TM as he “molded the Pistols into the most confrontational, nihilistic band rock & roll had ever seen.” AZ “Who cares if they were as manufactured as the Monkees, derivative of the New York Dolls, and better at getting press coverage than coming up with new songs – everyone who heard them went out and started a punk band, and the music world’s been a better place as a result.” PK

“The Pistols’ early singles Anarchy in the U.K. and God Save the Queen defined the raging style of British punk.” AZ “The British government was so afraid of their rising popularity and ability to influence the masses, the pop charts printed a blank space” when “Anarchy” hit #1. RV The song “embodies everything revolutionary rock ‘n’ roll should be. Raunchy riffs and throbbing percussion underline Rotten’s declaration, ‘I am an antichrist / I am an anarchist.’” RV

The latter song was equally incendiary with “its snarled refrains and bellicose chants” TM daring to “voice the opinion that the monarch ‘ain’t no human bein.’” TL “The Pistols released the song in time for the Queen’s Jubilee in celebration of Queen Elizabeth as an indictment the country's inability to provide for the working class.” RV

Holidays in the Sun “equates Nazism with the leisure activities of the upper classes: ‘I don’t want a holiday in the sun / I wanna go to the new Belsen,’ a reference to the German concentration camp. The song shows the Pistols at their finest” RV – “something offensive to hear…and more offensive to ignore.” TL

“Inspired by a mental patient who corresponded with the Rotten, the singer boldly tackles the abortion controversy on Bodies. Abortion gets the proper nihilistic treatment, with the lyrics taking the point of view of the mother, the fetus and a judgmental on-looker. Considering the band's liberal views, ‘Bodies’ comes off as surprisingly pro-life, with Rotten crying, ‘Mummy, I’m not an animal’ and declaring abortion a ‘bloody fucking mess.’” RV

The Pistols also “perfected one of rock’s great subgenres: the anthem of sneering indolence. No Feelings, Liar, and Pretty Vacant all portrayed Britain’s youth as numbed and hollowed out by hypocrisy and lack of opportunity, offering nothing by way of consolation but a blast of guitar and a keening snarl.” VH1

Other cuts include “the sinister Submission…and the hilariously knuckle-headed Seventeen, with its refrain, “I’m a lazy sod.’” TB The group also burned bridges with a kiss-off to previous record company A&M and “an earlier bust-up with EMI” TB on the not-so-subtly-titled EMI closing track.

“Already anthemic songs are rendered positively transcendent by Johnny Rotten’s rabid, foaming delivery.” AMG “Rotten, who had never sung before, had a gift for malice that he turned on the complacent England of the 70s.” TL “His bitterly sarcastic attacks on pretentious affectation and the very foundations of British society were all carried out in the most confrontational, impolite manner possible.” AMG He was “self-consciously repugnant” VH1 and “deeply bright, funny and so disgusted with the world that he allowed no nonsense of any sort to taint the purity of his guerrilla operation.” VH1 His “lyrics – direct, blunt, biting – were like antisocial haikus” VH1 and his “off-key sneering” TB made for “one of the most recognizable [vocal styles] in history.” TB

Of course, there was also “Steve Jones’ buzz-saw guitar” AZ which made “the songs explosive and catchy” TL “and (most importantly) bass player Glen Matlock’s hook-filled compositional skills.” AZ However, “by the time they recorded their lone 1977 album, Matlock had been bounced, replaced by the image-correct but utterly untalented (and ultimately group-dooming) Sid Vicious,” AZ “a tragic sideshow.” TL

“The Pistols paved the way for countless other bands to make similarly rebellious statements, but arguably none were as daring or effective.” AMG They unleashed “an undeniable force, leading to explosions of awesome magnitude that proved key to the then-developing ethos of punk.” TM “Never Mind the Bollocks is simply one of the greatest, most inspiring rock records of all time.” AMG “No one inspired the revolution, chaos and hatred of the world like The Sex Pistols.” RV

Saturday, October 22, 1977

On October 27, 1977, the rock world suffered one of the most tragic losses in music history when a twin-engine, propeller-driven Convair 240 plane crashed in a wooded area near Gillsburg, Mississippi. The chartered plane out of Texas carried the members of Southern rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd. They were headed from a Greenville, South Carolina, show to another in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The reported cause of the crash was fuel shortage. Of the 26 passengers on board, six were killed. They included Lynyrd Skynyrd’s singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister and backup singer Cassie Gaines. They were all 28 years old. The group’s assistant road manager, Dean Kirkpatrick was also among the dead. Walter Wiley McCreary and William John Gray, the pilot and co-pilot, were also killed. Others were critically injured.

Lynyrd Skynyrd formed in Jacksonville, Florida, when Van Zant played in high school with Gary Rossington and Allen Collins. They named their band after the Robert E. Lee High School’s physical education instructor Leonard Skinner as a means of getting even. He was not a fan of long hair and loud music and he played a hand in getting them suspended from school.

Friday, October 21, 1977

Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)
Bat Out of Hell (2/10/79; #8 UK) / You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) (5/20/78; #39 US, #33 UK) / Heaven Can Wait / All Revved Up with No Place to Go / Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad (3/18/78; #11 US, #32 UK) / Paradise by the Dashboard Light (8/12/78; #39 US) / For Crying Out Loud

Sales (in millions): 14.0 US, 2.84 UK, 43.0 world

Peak: 14 US, 9 UK

Rating:

Review:
“There is no other album like Bat Out of Hell, unless you want to count the sequel.” AMG “Nobody else wanted to make mini-epics like this.” AMG This collection of songs makes for “one of rock’s most theatrical, grandiose records” RS and one of the genre’s “least likely hit albums.” AZ It is “overwrought and undeniable;” AZ “epic, gothic, operatic, and silly – and it’s appealing because of all of this.” AMG “It’s rock as soap opera.” PR

Meat Loaf, born Marvin Lee Aday, had alternated between recording music and appearing on stage through the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He starred in the musical More Than You Deserve, written by the classically-trained pianist Jim Steinman, after which the pair decided to work on a musical album project based on Peter Pan. It evolved into the Bat Out of Hell album. TB

As a composer, Steinman drew on the “pomp and circumstance of Richard Wagner” TB and subscribed to the same principle which “made Andrew Lloyd Webber a multimillionaire knight: if you do kitsch, do it big.” AZ “There never could have been a singer more suited for [Steinman’s] compositions than Meat Loaf, a singer partial to bombast, albeit shaded bombast.” AMG In addition, Todd Rundgren “gives Steinman’s self-styled grandiosity a production that’s staggeringly big but never overwhelming and always alluring.” AMG

The songs on Bat Out of Hell are fused with “sentiments are deliberately adolescent and filled with jokes and exaggerated clichés.” AMG This is “the sound of the American dream slipping into a coma as images of drive-in movies, teenage sexual fantasies and motorbike mythology flash before its eyes.” PR “It may be easy to dismiss this as ridiculous, but there’s real style and craft here and its kitsch is intentional.” AMG “There’s real (albeit silly) wit behind these compositions” AMG and “Meat Loaf finds the emotional core in each song, bringing true heartbreak to Two Out of Three Ain't Bad and sly humor” AMG to “the breathless nookie-quest [of] Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” AZ complete with “baseball announcer [Phil Rizzuto] to narrate the backseat hookup.” CS

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

The album “often gets compared to [Bruce Springsteen’s] Born to Run.” CSBat has “Springsteen-esque narratives,” AMG “the same small-town themes, epic production, and even personnel [E Street Band members Max Weinberg and Roy Bitten] but where Born to Run provides a nuanced look at the trials and triumphs of kids bursting out of small town America, Meat Loaf throws subtlety out the window. Everything here is bigger. Bat Out of Hell turns ‘Born to Run’ into a 10-minute roar, throwing motorcycle sound effects and ‘Leader of the Pack’ melodrama into the pot.” CS

In addition, this is musically “a savvy blend of oldies pastiche, show tunes, prog rock…and blistering hard rock (thereby sounding a bit like an extension of Rocky Horror Picture Show, which brought Meat Loaf to the national stage).” AMG “It’s hard not to marvel at the skill behind this grandly silly, irresistible” AMG and “brassy, brash and over the top” ZS “megaselling, megabombastic mega-album.” RS “There are only a small number of records that fall into the ‘essential rock album’ category, and this is definitely one of them.” NO

Saturday, October 8, 1977

This was Joel’s fifth album and “is generally regarded by critics as his magnum opus.” WK It is also his best-selling studio album to date. WK His “breakout LP came years after he first hit the charts with the novelty-ish ‘Piano Man’” DH and after four moderately successful albums. However, his previous albums “blunted interesting songs with a sound that was neither Elton mellow nor Elton attitude.” DH For The Stranger, “Billy Joel teamed with Phil Ramone, a famed engineer who had just scored his first producing hits with Art Garfunkel's Breakaway and Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years.” STE

“Joel still favored big, sweeping melodies, but Ramone convinced him to streamline his arrangements and clean up the production. The results aren’t necessarily revelatory, since he covered so much ground on Turnstiles, but the commercialism of The Stranger is a bit of a surprise” STE for “those who had written Joel off as a one-hit wonder.” DH “None of his ballads have been as sweet or slick as Just the Way You Are,” STE which won Grammys for Record and Song of the Year. In addition, Joel “he never had created a rocker as bouncy or infectious as Only the Good Die Young; and the glossy production of She's Always a Woman disguises its latent misogynist streak.” STE

“Joel balanced such radio-ready material with a series of New York vignettes, seemingly inspired by Springsteen’s working-class fables and clearly intended to be the artistic centerpieces of the album. They do provide The Stranger with the feel of a concept album, yet there is no true thematic connection between the pieces, and his lyrics are often vague or mean-spirited.” STE

The title song is marked by a “signature whistle line” WK which Joel initially intended just as a fill-in until, as he told Ramone, he found the right instrument to play in its place. Ramone’s response: “No, you don’t. That’s ‘The Stanger,’ the whistling.” WK

“His lyrical shortcomings are overshadowed by his musical strengths. Even if his melodies sound more Broadway than Beatles – the epic suite Scenes from an Italian Restaurant feels like a show-stopping closer – there’s no denying that the melodies of each song on The Stranger are memorable, so much so that they strengthen the weaker portions of the album.” STE

“Joel rarely wrote a set of songs better than those on The Stranger, nor did he often deliver an album as consistently listenable.” STEThe Stranger “remains a solid introduction to Joel's restless muse at a crucial point in his career.” DH The album invites some “comparisons to Bruce Springsteen” DH but in “a lower middle-class (Eastern Urban) setting, but Joel’s chameleonic, formalist approach to pop wasn't to be so easily pigeonholed.” DH

I refer to The Grand Illusion as Styx’s breakthrough album, but it was neither their debut nor first hit. The group had released four albums with indie label Wooden Nickel. However, they went largely unnoticed until “Lady”, a song from 1973’s Styx II, was belatedly picked up by radio and became a top ten hit in 1975. The group then signed with major label A&M. The next two albums, 1975’s Equinox and 1976’s Crystal Ball both landed top 40 hits with “Lorelei” (#27) and “Mademoiselle” (#36) respectively, but the albums didn’t even crack the top 50.

Styx’s seventh album changed everything. Fueled by second top ten hit “Come Sail Away”, The Grand Illusion was a triple-platinum, top ten success which “led Styx steadfastly into the domain of AOR rock” MD and introduced them “to the gates of commercial stardom.” MD

Follow-up single, “Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)”, gave Styx its fifth top 40 hit and established them as one of rock’s rare bands with more than one singer/songwriter. Dennis DeYoung wrote and sang “Lady” and “Come Sail Away” and later took “Babe” (the group’s sole #1 hit), “The Best of Times”, “Mr. Roboto”, “Don’t Let It End”, and “Show Me the Way” to the top ten. With “Fooling Yourself”, Tommy Shaw became a force as well. His pop success wasn’t as pronounced as DeYoung’s – his only top ten was “Too Much Time on My Hands” – but he helmed album-rock-friendly gems with “Fooling Yourself”, “Crystal Ball”, “Blue Collar Man”, and “Renegade”.

The Grand Illusion also gave guitarist James Young a vehicle to showcase his chops with the hard-charging “Miss America”. That song and the title cut have since become staples at album-rock stations.

Granted, Styx has never been a critics’ favorite. I am a firm believer, though, that personal taste should always be about what one likes just because one likes it. I argued this point in more depth in my June 27, 2010 blog entry/essay called, appropriately, “The Styx Defense”. So go ahead and pull out the album again and listen to it without shame. I’m certainly playing it again for the umpteenth time.